I mean, Ohtani is still at a $46M AAV, and they just added $36M more for 2024 in Glasnow/Margot.
I think it’s hard to know what John Henry’s “style” is when the team is facing the prospect of a third straight last place finish.
Clearly they are blowing way past 2024, but they are still in relatively decent shape for 2025 right?
What could you possibly be basing this on? What indication does any of us have of where the Sox tap out? I don’t understand this thinking at all.
Right, I’d kinda expect he would, but within that particular rivalry he’d always play second fiddle.
Is he a big ego guy or just a competitor? I haven’t heard anything about the former.
Everybody's in decent shape for 2025 right now. But spotrac estimates have them as the 2nd highest payroll team for the year by current commitments.
It’s widely known he loves the spotlight. So does he want to be the #2 guy in LA or NYY or be the man in Boston or SF or in Queens? Hopefully Pedro was brought on to help him sell how electric the nights were in Fenway when he pitched and how a whole country’s support was prevalent in Fenway.
He would certainly be in the spotlight in Boston. Hopefully, it would be a good spotlight based on dominant pitching.
There’s a line of thinking that he’d have to share the spotlight a good amount for the Mets too, with an excellent and established Japanese starter already on the staff and with Lindor, who is a much splashier personality than Devers. For the Yankees, he’d be arguably the 4th biggest star.
And pretty quickly it becomes about performance, if he has a 1.27 ERA in June, he's going to be the focus wherever he is. Same if he has a 5.27 ERA, and in that case, he might be happy to have other superstars around to shield some of the criticism.
That was my point as well. If he didn’t pitch well in
I'm almost beginning to think all my page refreshing isn’t having any impact at all.
He looks different than the last time we saw him getting shelled, throwing a weak knuckleball.
Thanks a lot You needed bigger font on your footnote. Those knuckleballers can go until 50 but I was pretty floored.
He would likely be the #1 guy in LA this season and there is no guarantee that Ohtani comes back as the top pitcher. Now Ohtani might overshadow him just as a member of the team, but so might Betts and even possibly Freeman. Is his ego that big or fragile that he can't handle being part of a super team that where on any given day someone else may get top billing?
It's because they desperately need starting pitching, and he's ace caliber, and he's just 25 years old.
He looks like The Real Thing and all he costs is money. Is this a baseball team that's on the field to compete or is it not?
Well. They stopped spending as much. They've been pretty bad for a while. They have maybe one sure all-star caliber player on the roster (maybe Casas becomes the second).
There is a vast difference between “spend lots of money on premium players” and “offer whatever it takes, I don’t care how much” - and it appears that’s where the majority of this board is headed. The contract will most likely eclipse the highest FA pitcher contract ever - for someone that has never pitched in MLB.
I get what you are saying, but I think the comparison is kind of apples to oranges. While real estate is cyclical, and does have corrections, the market for elite athletes never seems to go down.
Maybe, but eclipsing the highest FA pitcher contract ever is essentially a product of it being the newest contract and of free agent pitchers being typically several years older.
Plus, Yamamoto has been talked about for more than a year. This feels less like a free agent chase and more like a game where fans hope their teams win
I just don't get where your ire is going. If they land him at $300m, are you intending to be pissed at SoSH members for being happy about? If he goes to LA or NYC we should be thrilled?
I'm firmly in this camp as well. I think people greatly overstate what a tough sell the Red Sox are.
Would be a better argument in a year where we didn’t just have Boston’s second-rainiest summer in recorded history.
Seriously? Players are now going to steer clear of Boston because it rains too much. Okay.
Everyone’s preferences differ on this topic, of course. I grew up in New England, lived in other cities and moved back, and I personally can’t stand how dismal the weather here is. When it rains as much during the summer as it did last year, I feel like I’m losing my mind.
